[Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

This post is focused on holypriests. But the findings are probably useful for other specs and classes too. The TLDR version: intellect is vastly superior to all other forms of regen. Of course, that point is moot if you have a double solace or the spark of hope trinket setup. In that case, you don't need regen anymore. But for the rest of us, here is why and by how much.

MP5

1 MP5 costs twice as much itemization as a stat point. This means you can get 2 spirit or 1 MP5 for the same itemization cost. As a consequence, The MP5 stat is really worth 0.5 MP5. This number never scale with anything. It also doesn't hold the secondary benefits that f.ex spirit grants you, with 0.25 spellpower per point of spirit, or int, which grants 1/166th % of crit. For this reason, MP5 is usually considered subpar for holypriests. But at low gear levels, it is the best stat for regen.

Next up, spirit. The tried and true formula for regen is known and "simple".

MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * 0.005575) * 0.60, rounded up

At 1293 intellect, 5 * sqrt(int) * 0.005575 = 1. I often use this level of intellect to simplify the formula. Most priests have more than that in intellect these days though, so this is a low estimate. But let us run with it. The simplified version is thus:

MP5 = Spirit * 0.60

Half of which is FSR regen. Most priests hardly leave the FSR these days, so the following is a good approximation to FSR regen through spirit.

FSRMP5 = Spirit * 0.30

Of course, you can add 5% through talents, and another 10% through BoK. You are probably only inside the FSR for only 95% of the time. And you are likely to have more than 1293 intellect. And most importantly, your will have a notable uptime on holy concentration. I've found number between 20 and 50% to be good estimates, but if you have other data to back this up, I'm all ears. At 35% Holyconc uptime, you can add 17.5% to your spirit income. But just for the heck of it, lets go with 50% uptime today, that means 25% gains!

As an estimate to spirit regen, I often hold the rule of thumb that 1 spirit is worth 0.5 MP5. If you want a perfect estimation of your regen through spirit, I can heartily recommend Zusterke's regen calculator. So I'm going to run with this value that 1 spirit = 0.5 MP5 today.

1 Spirit also offers 0.25 spellpower through Spiritual Guidance, multiplied by 5% from SoR and 10% from BoK. 1 spellpower is worth 0.86 itemization, so this is worth 0.215*1.05*1.10=0.248 itemization points.

Combined, this means 1 spirit is worth 1.248 itemization points.

Intellect

And then to the point of this post. Intellect. It is my claim that intellect outperform spirit badly, even when considering the spellpower gains. I will measure this through itemization.

Intellect grants three sources of regen, and grants a minor boost to critical hit.

- Regen through the spirit formula
- Regen through active cooldowns
- Regen through a large manapool reserve

Let's cover each in detail.

Regen through the spirit formula

Calculating the gains from int in this formula is relatively complex. The gains from 1 int is significantly larger at low intellect levels than the gains from 1 int at high intellect levels.

But... assuming 1293 int is the "baseline" intellect, anything beyond that should be counted as value for intellect, really. But the gains from intellect is not linear. But you can easily calculate the difference, and put that into the formula to see what the gains of that intellect is.

Let us consider a case with 1500 spirit and 1500 int. The difference between sqrt(1293) sqrt(1500) is 35.958-38.729 = 2.771. By putting this back into the spirit formula instead of sqrt(int), we can get the gains from the 207 int we are over the baseline int value.

By going up 207 int, we gained 69.5 MP5. FSR regen is half of that, so we're at 34.75 MP5. Since we added 207 int in this case, that's 0.16 MP5 per point of intellect.

You can do similar calculations for any level of intellect. But you will find that the gains from intellect through the spirit formula is in this ballpark. Of course, higher spirit means significantly higher returns from intellect as well. I will run with this number for the conclusion.

Ultimately, int gains from the spirit formula depend on your level of spirit. High spirit means int is better. High int means spirit is better. If the spirit formula was the only gains of regen, the optimal balance between int and spirit is a 2spirit:1intellect ratio. Attaining that balance is neither possible nor advisable, because there are other gains from intellect as well which will offset this balance badly. But since you cannot actively avoid gear with spirit on it anyway, I wouldn't worry about this ratio too much, TBH.

- Regen through active cooldowns

This is a hard calculation, since it totally depends on playstyle. Assuming you use your cooldowns at every possible cooldown, you will get the following:

- Replenishment: 0.15 MP5 per point of intellect
- Shadowfiend: 0.125 MP5 per point of intellect (significantly more if used with hymn of hope or bloodlust)
- Hymn of Hope: 0.03 MP5 per point of intellect
- Manatide totem: 0.06 MP5 per totem per point of intellect
- Arcane Torrent: 0.02 MP5 per point of intellect (if blood elf, but let's assume you are not)

That's 0.37 MP5 per point of intellect if added together. However doing so is not really sound math. These cooldowns will not be used on every cooldown. Even replenishment will not see a 100% uptime. But if you use the shadowfiend with hymn of hope (and you should), even the 0.37 MP5 value may be a bit low. But, I will run at 75% overall efficiency of this number. That means 0.28 MP5 per point of intellect from active cooldowns. If you want a more precise simulation, again, Zusterkes calculator will give you an answer.

- Regen through a large manapool reserve

Many people forget about this part. But having a large manapool is equivalent to regeneration by itself. People often forget, because you carry a mindset of wanting to heal forever. Don't think like that. You need to heal for at most 10 minutes before the boss enrages. And all fights lasting longer than 7.5 minutes will have slow periods in them which allows you to regen some mana. Zusterkes otherwise excellent calculator does not cover this income at the time of writing.

A priest with 100 mana and 0 income, spending 2 mana per second, will go OOM in 50 seconds.
A priest with 50 mana and 1 mana per second income, spending 2 mana per second, will also run OOM in 50 seconds.

In this example, having 50 max mana or 1 mana per second is interchangable.

With that thought in mind, consider this:

We know that 1 int gives 15 max mana. For the same itemization cost, we could get 0.5 MP5.

If the fight lasts longer than 2.5 minutes, getting that regen as MP5 is superior. If the fight lasts shorter than 2.5 minutes, getting that regen as intellect is superior. But as we just pointed out, int also gives other sources of regen.

I will assume our fights lasting 7.5 minutes. It's not always true, many fights last longer. Some last considerably shorter. But I think this is a good estimate.

In a fight lasting 7.5 minutes, having 0.5 MP5 is 3 times as good as having 15 max mana. Conversely, 1 int is worth 0.5/3=0.16 MP5 by just having a large manapool!

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Summary for intellect:

1 int is worth ~0.16 MP5 through the spirit formula
1 int is worth ~0.28 MP5 through active cooldowns
1 int is worth ~0.16 MP5 through a large manapool reserve
Summarized, 1 int is worth ~0.6 MP5.
The latter two are turn is increased by 10% through BoK, the first is increased by ~5%, leaving us at ~0.65 MP5 per point of intellect!
This is worth 1.3 itemization points.

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

But in theory, if you stop loving spirit in lieu of Int because its better for you in the long run, you're losing a large chunk of spell power from spirit, therefor your heals will hit for less and you're going to be casting more heals more often, therefore depleting your mana pool faster, and thus losing the benefits of better regen?

Edit: I guess since you crit more often, it would make up for the loss in spell power, but still, counting on a crit is bad for healing.

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

Originally Posted by Lexxe

But in theory, if you stop loving spirit in lieu of Int because its better for you in the long run, you're losing a large chunk of spell power from spirit, therefor your heals will hit for less and you're going to be casting more heals more often, therefore depleting your mana pool faster, and thus losing the benefits of better regen?

Edit: I guess since you crit more often, it would make up for the loss in spell power, but still, counting on a crit is bad for healing.

The thing is, itemization numbers breaks this idea. Even if spirit gives you both regen and spellpower, which is really all we ever need on gear, it gives less so than what you would gain by getting int and spellpower as separate stats for the same itemization. Mostly because intellect is a damned good stat for regen. You cannot realistically avoid spirit, and it's not a horrible stat, but it doesn't mean you should gear for it. Gear for intellect. When you are done, the remaining itemization can be used for throughput. Since int is awesome you will spend much less itemization on getting up to a decent regen level, and in turn get more throughput as a side effect.

Or let me put it this way.
When gearing for MP5, you get what you pay for.
When gearing for spirit, you get 21.5% more value.
When gearing for intellect, you get 63.7% more value.

This is also the reason the Solace trinket or the Spark of Hope or the pre-nerf snowflake trinket is so awesome. It covers a silly amount of regen, freeing up itemization for throughput instead. I assume that smeedsc has the regen needs covered through those trinkets, which is why he rightfully can say what he says.

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

Originally Posted by Danner

The thing is, itemization numbers breaks this idea. Even if spirit gives you both regen and spellpower, which is really all we ever need on gear, it gives less so than what you would gain by getting int and spellpower as separate stats for the same itemization. Mostly because intellect is a damned good stat for regen. You cannot realistically avoid spirit, and it's not a horrible stat, but it doesn't mean you should gear for it. Gear for intellect. When you are done, the remaining itemization can be used for throughput. Since int is awesome you will spend much less itemization on getting up to a decent regen level, and in turn get more throughput as a side effect.

This is also the reason the Solace trinket or the Spart of Hope or the pre-nerf snowflake trinket is so awesome. It covers a silly amount of regen, freeing up itemization for throughput instead.

Yeah, I see your point. So what you're saying is pick up gear you see that you like, but don't favor spirit over Int anymore.

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

I have a question, holy concentration improves your in FSR regen based on your out of FSR regen which is based on spirit. On my character it's up 80+% of the time without gemming for crit.

Does this not increase spirit's value?

Dang. I knew I forgot something.

And yes, it does. At 80% uptime, with 50% extra gain, that's a +40% gain. But really. 80% uptime? I have a very hard time believing that. I remember doing some research on ulduar raids a few months back, and I got to around 20-50% uptime depending on the encounter. Ulduar was very flash heal heavy, but then again ICC is too.

At an average 35% uptime, that's a +17.5% gain. Which still helps the case of spirit tremendously, but not to the point of taking over int.

I'll update the OP.

EDIT: Updated the OP. and I did that calculation a little more seriously. Seems like I had overshot the value of spirit quite severely. By doing a proper calculation, adding 50% holyconc uptime, I still ended up on the same value of 1 spi = 0.5 MP5.
Sorry.

But again, thanks for pointing this out. I feel ashamed forgetting about it!

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

Originally Posted by smeedsc

what is this "intel" that you speak of?

gear has that and spirit...

Spellpower and maybe spellpower/crit/haste all the way =D

very few items have intel as a main stat for example uhh Cold Convergence or Whateverthe Hordenameis staff THAT has alot of intel , Intel gives you crit, and haste just comes with gear; but as a holy priest I guess you COULD gem for sp+haste and not look stupid, like a disc priest would < . All my gear is gemmed with pure intellect, because my ms is Disc, but when I spec holy and change out a trinket and a ring, I have about 25% crit. When Holy Concentration kicks in + the Solace 8stack I have about 1.1k mana regen with the base spirit that comes with gear since I don't gem for spirit. As for haste... dotdotdot.

Re: [priest, holy] The value of intellect

Originally Posted by Danner

Dang. I knew I forgot something.

And yes, it does. At 80% uptime, with 50% extra gain, that's a +40% gain. But really. 80% uptime? I have a very hard time believing that. I remember doing some research on ulduar raids a few months back, and I got to around 20-50% uptime depending on the encounter. Ulduar was very flash heal heavy, but then again ICC is too.

At an average 35% uptime, that's a +17.5% gain. Which still helps the case of spirit tremendously, but not to the point of taking over int.

I'll update the OP.

EDIT: Updated the OP. and I did that calculation a little more seriously. Seems like I had overshot the value of spirit quite severely. By doing a proper calculation, adding 50% holyconc uptime, I still ended up on the same value of 1 spi = 0.5 MP5.
Sorry.

But again, thanks for pointing this out. I feel ashamed forgetting about it!

Okay, I'm still having a problem though, considering intellect is yellow.

These gems are not for everyone. What you should gem for depends on what you need. If you don't have mana troubles, gemming for regen is totally pointless. In that case, go all out with throughput. Your gem choices are just that: maximized throughput while maintaining the socket bonus. Though gemming for crit seems odd to me, but each to his own I guess.

Re: [Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

The optimal balance between int and spirit as far as the spirit formula goes is a 2spirit:1intellect ratio. This is not attainable unless you actively seek out items without spirit on it, and that's kind of pointless as holy.

This also confused me. How do you get 2 Spirit to 1 Intellect, if you're avoiding Spirit like the plague?

While some fights have lulls in them, which pumps up more for Spirit Regen (especially if you're of the Pro-Renew club), I'm not really liking the inclusion of Mana Tide or Hymn of Hope in your Intellect gains. You may not have a resto shaman (or they could be tossed in the tank group for an overpowered healing stream depending on the fight), or said shaman may die and use Reincarnation, thus blowing the mana before you actually needed it.

Hymn of Hope is not always usable, not with Shadowfiend and certainly not without. Even if you can get it off, there's no guarantee that it'll target you as one of the output sources.

Shadowfiend may also be used offensively if additional dps is needed through burst phases (thing bloody hits hard). I know that early Heartbreakers needed it to take off.

Realistically, you may never see active cooldowns that return a percentage of your mana, thus dropping Intellect's effectiveness by an enormous chunk.

Lulls of course do happen: Phase changes, target changes frequently coincide with softer healing required, or even generally letting the HoTs "fall into place". It is possible to step outside the FSR, and while 90% is stretching the number for most fights, not by alot. Doing so will net higher regen from Spirit than raw Intellect can, as will throwing in Holy Concentration during such a lull (and possibly chaining Inner Focus if a Hymn's not needed).

In short, taking off the active cooldown consideration (and Hope's synergy with the others) Intellect does drop fairly significantly.
Gaining possibly half of these might be lucky dependent on the fight. Dropping Intellect down to 0.48 mp5, prior to blessing of Kings. And I dare say, that while Crit may be more expensive on an item's budget, there's not a chance that 0.00662% (counting Kings)chance to crit outweighs 0.288 (Kings+SoR) Spell Power.

Edit: And while I'm at it, Intellect, as yellow, has a thoroughput option to stick in your yellow slots. Haste. There is no blue equivalent, so going SP, SP/Haste, and SP/Spirit has a net gain as well, if you're still sticking to color by that point.

Re: [Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

I guess I will need to clarify that first part, Kelesti. Thanks for the feedback.

Assuming the only gains from intellect was from the spirit formula, the optimal balance between int and spirit is a 1:2 ratio. Of course, this is not the only source of income.

A very good question is what the optimal relation really is. The value of intellect given 0 spirit isn't all that great - the gains from the intellect formula vanishes completely. Sadly, I don't think I have a good answer to this question beyond "stack int, you'll get spirit anyway".

--

As far as the active cooldowns go, yes, they are major risk factors, and yes, they will not be used all the time. I accounted for those.

Replenishment will be up 95% of the time. Rarely more, but rarely significantly less either.

Shadowfiend will likely be used once per fight. You don't often use it more. But at least I try to use it when there is some boosters for it in play. It really makes a lot of difference to use it while under the influence of hymn of hope or bloodlust, and it feels like such a waste not to.

Manatide totem will usually be used at every cooldown, but not during the first minute or so. Those shammies are actually quite good at using it. At least my guild shammies are. I guess I may be jaded here, but I don't think 90% "uptime" is all wrong.

Hymn of hope is often very underused. It is also very hard to use, but I almost always find a place to use it. I must admit I rarely use it for myself, but mostly for the benefits of our other healers. Still, casters rarely run oom, so being one of the 12 people with lowest MP isn't a hard criteria.

Now, the unaccounted wildcard here is the booster from the shadowfiend. I will not calculate in that, but know that it is there, and that it i extremely powerful. I try to get that boost, and so should you

Of course... there are fights where there is no need to use any of the active cooldowns since the healing requirements are so low. In these fights, we don't need mana, and purposely don't use the cooldowns either. And yes, that means int is suddenly much less useful. But then, so is spirit. We just established that we didn't need the mana. For these fights, heavy throughput gear is optimal.

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And yes, there are often fights with lulls in them. These fights also often lasts longer than my allotted 7.5 minutes. In these fights, the OOFSR time often go all up to 10%. This means that instead of multiplying the gains from spirit with 5 (found through solving "X*0.95 + 2X*0.05"), we multiply it with 1.10 (found through solving "X*0.90 + 2X*0.10"). This will push the value of spirit above 0.5 MP5 per point of spirit - but not significantly more. We won't even hit 0.55 MP5 per point of spirit. Int is still at 0.66 MP5 per point according to my calculations. And that is still a major difference.

Re: [Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

And I'm no that bright, either. It's not 0.6% chance to crit from each point of Intellect.

It's 0.06%, the equivalent of 0.27 rating like you said. That was my bad, sorry.

Replenishment will be up 95% of the time, true. I wasn't counting for that.

And good on your Shaman. Most of the time, I'm still at 85 and rocking a Holy Concentration so Mana Tide still doesn't see its full effectiveness on me, even when I get it, which of course as I pointed out before: is a rarity.

Could you explain your "uptimes" that you have there? I'm not sure I actually follow that.

Shadowfiend hits 10-11 times, each hit returns 5% mana. 11 is the technical limit; with bloodlust you can even manage 15 hits. But I will assume 10 for now, it really depends on how fast you can get the squid to the target. That means 50% mana returned every 5 minutes if you use it on every cooldown. 1 int gives 15 max mana, so that's 7.5 mana every 300 seconds per point of int. Or 5*7.5/300=0.125 MP5. I rounded this off to 0.12, which is technically wrong, but I was trying to measure the absolute low point of the potential gains from shadowfiend assuming 100% uptime.

Manatide totem restores 24% of max mana of anyone in the party every 300 seconds. Using the same calculation as the shadowfiend above (substituting 50% with 24%), we get 5*15*0.24/300=0.06 MP5 per point of intellect.

Hymn of hope is harder to put a number on. I must admit I opted for the cheaty solution and just assumed it was equal to a manatide totem. This is probably not correct, so let me see if I can get some better number. Off the bat HoH returns 3% mana to a target, 4 times over 8 seconds. That means 12% max mana. This in turn is increased by 20% thanks to the "last stand" effect Hymn of Hope adds to your manapool, putting us up to 14.4% every 360 seconds. Calculating, we get 0.03 MP5 per point of intellect. That's exactly half of what I estimated for, so I guess I should readjust my original calculation here!

That said, The true power of HoH is that it increase all int-based regen effects by 20%. I have not calculated in that, but it's sizable. +20% to the shadowfiend gains is amazing. I guess we can't depend on this though.

Correcting for HoH, That takes me from 0.4 MP5 from active cooldowns to 0.37 MP5. I'll update the OP.

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Of course, these are numbers assuming 100% uptime. We already covered we won't have 100% uptime

Re: [Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

Assuming Blessing of Kings for Intellect and (SoR included) Spirit, did you want to include those into the increased crit values and Spell Power?

And the other thing about Hymn of Hope's "last stand" effect. It can push you above other people's mana pools, thus removing you from future ticks. It can be awesome, I just don't like its clunky feeling, especially in 25's where there's more people for it to bounce between. WTB a minor [Glyph of Hope] where you're guaranteed to be one of the recipients? Yes please.

I still don't understand your "uptime" calculations, though. How does a 15 second ability on 5 minute cooldown have a 66% "uptime"?
Or Mana Tide nearing 90%, with Hymn being 40? I dont' really follow this logic, could you elaborate a little further on that?

Re: [Priest / Holy] The value of Intellect

Ooh. The spirit spellpower increase should definitively be increased by 10% from BoK & SoR. Good point, I'd totally forgotten. Keep on poking holes in these numbers!

Agree on the Glyph of Hymn of Hope idea. That would make the spell infinitely more useful!

Uptimes. Right.

Shadowfiend first then.

Assuming you have a 25k manapool. Using shadowfiend gives you 50% of your manapool back, at a 300 second cooldown. Assuming you use it at the very second the cooldown is ready, that means you can divide the 12500 mana gained seconds and get some sort of regen equivalent out of it by dividing the 12500 mana gained by 300 seconds. In this case, you would get 208 MP5. Instead of doing that calculation on your entire manapool, I did it on the poolsize gains from a single point of intellect. That gave me 0.125 MP5 per point of int.

We don't use shadowfiend every single cooldown. In fact, we are only likely to use it once per combat. Assuming our fight lasts 7.5 minutes, that means the shadowfiend is "spent" for 5 out of those 7.5 minutes. Or 66% of the time. This is the low end number. If you use it twice in that 7.5 minute fight, the uptime is actually 133%, which is kinda awesome, but not really likely on most fights. With various fight lenghts come various uptimes. It's hard to give a definite number here, I just picked a typical one. Int regen from cooldowns will undeniably vary a lot.

Manatide then.

As I boldly proclaimed in the OP, at least my guild shammies are very quick to use this totem. It rarely occurs that it is available but not used; healers will always need mana. So I claimed 90% "uptime" for it; it's basically used all the time as it's just a fire&forget ability. But it's not used immediately when everyone is at full mana. I wanted to put 100% here, but I could not in good conscience do so, there is some wait before it is used. Still, I believe 90% to be too low. Just like shadowfiend it is very likely to be used twice in a given fight. That means more than 100% uptime on fights lasting less than 10 minutes. YMMV, if you wish to offer a different uptime ratio I am all ears

Hymn of Hope; like shadowfiend, is likely to only be used once per fight. It's also used less than shadowfiend, but at least I make a point of using them together. I will not lie however, it's seeing less use than the shadowfiend; not all fights allow for the 8 second wait. Sometimes I wait until I'm all dried up before using it in combination with the fiend, just to be sure I get a tick myself. I picked 40% as a number, but I don't have much good evidence to back this up. It's kinda low though, and based of an ability that gives very little returns anyway in the worst case (which I base my calculations on), so it shouldn't really matter.

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Arguably, converting active cooldowns to MP5 equivalents is not a good idea. They return mana, and we should possibly look at the direct mana gains instead, based on the # of times it is used in a fight. But since I needed some common grounds to compare int and spirit, this was the only way. A calculator like zusterke's can handle this much better.